Suit The System To The Player: A Methodology for Physical Creativity

Friedhoff's paper argues that motion-controlled exertion games such as those built for Kinect, PlayStation Move, and Wii tend to constrain players to narrow, tightly tracked movements, when they could instead nurture physical creativity and shared, norm-breaking play. Its central proposal is a five-part methodology: inattentive systems that track loosely, festive social contexts, responsive systems that generate outcomes from player input, multiple simultaneous physical inputs balanced for skill, and playful transgression of social norms. The argument is developed through theoretical reasoning and qualitative examples, including B.U.T.T.O.N., WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Happy Action Theater, Messa di Voce, and PewPewPewPewPewPewPewPewPew, rather than through large-scale empirical study.

The paper's most substantial evidence comes from playtests of the author's own game, Scream 'Em Up, a voice- and body-driven design. Early sessions at Parsons' Spring Fair and Come Out And Play NYC showed players of all ages readily joining in, often playing in pairs or passing the device to friends. Players quickly adopted wild vocalizations and tended to match one another's vocal pitch while differing mainly in volume, and spectators and participants fed each other's energy toward a crescendo and a cheerful conclusion. Physical engagement, however, was more limited, with lateral movement largely confined to leaning, and the author suspects that the hip-joint tracking may have been too restrictive.

The postmortem judges the game a success in fostering playful transgression, responsive design, and vocal creativity, while acknowledging weaker results for multiple physical inputs. The author also notes that the playtests did not establish whether visual feedback increased vocal variation, leaving that question open. Overall, the paper's scope is a design-theoretical inquiry into physical play, supported by a small number of informal playtests, and its conclusions are best read as well-reasoned hypotheses for designers rather than established empirical findings.